Roman Kirschner is an artist, researcher, writer, teacher and sometimes curator working across disciplines. His current research interests revolve around social metabolisms and ecologies, interactions with environmental microbiomes, transformative materials, spatial strategies, research methods and the mutual influence of material, imagination and epistemology.

Maelström’ is one of the world’s strongest systems of tidal eddies and whirlpools at the Norwegian coast. Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story named ‘A descent into the Maelström’ in which a small group of fishermen gets caught by this stream and risks to be swallowed by the sea. The story inspired several people, among which Philip Glass and Marshall McLuhan, who wrote: ‘Pattern recognition in the midst of a huge, overwhelming, destructive force is the way out of the maelstrom.’

Roman Kirschner’s ‘Maelström’-project wants to transpose this saga into a screen based audiovisual installation, based on the kinetic behavior of magnetite particles driven by frame mounted magnets. The generative process of form, movement and sound results in a dynamic image and sound score derived in real-time.

Maelstrom is created in residency at MediaRuimte, LAb[au]’s gallery for electronic arts and realized with the financial support of the Commission Arts numériques de la Communauté française de Belgique and the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Arts and Culture..